Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda in Puerto Rico’s Partisan Press

This chapter takes a necessary turn way from the mainland U.S. towards Puerto Rico to conceptualize a poetics of paratextuality at the margins of the U.S. before and after the Spanish-American War. Not yet ceded to U.S. (this did not happen until after the Spanish-American War in 1898), the island of Puerto Rico provides a window into the colonial machinations of Spain in proximity to the expanding U.S. empire. The subject of this chapter is the Cuban-born transamerican poet, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda (1814-1873) and her appearance in the periodical press. Avellaneda’s presence in the periodical press reveals a tryptic image of colonial, anticolonial, decolonial interests that linked the Hispanophone Caribbean to Spain and the United States long before U.S.’s involvement in Cuba’s and Puerto Rico’s wars for independence. As a celebrity poetess with nationally recognized affiliations in Cuba, Spain, Puerto Rico, and the U.S., Avellaneda’s poems and reputation were bounded up in a dialectical push and pull print market of colonial, anticolonial, and decolonial desires. By comparing the varied representations of Avellaneda in New York City’s exile press to those in leading Spanish political organs in Puerto Rico, such as El Boletín mercantil de Puerto Rico and La correspondencia de Puerto Rico, the chapter reveals how Avellaneda’s poems and reputation were reimaged via certain manipulative editorial practices, including public censorship and partial political reportage. This chapter provides an important context for newspaper poets born outside of the mainland U.S., whose cultural image and reputation were routinely shaped by the paratext.